In an interview with NPR in the US, George Soros was asked why he had made his recent decision to donate $35 million to the state of New York, for the purpose of helping low income families with schooling costs.
Part of his motivation was to enable the release of a further $135 million in federal funding, which required the state to put up matching funds to release it. George's Foundation to Promote Open Society stepped in to give the state the money, which it could not afford.
Soros stated that "philanthropy has been badly hit by the financial crisis and so the usual donors actually are cutting back. I feel that people who can afford it should step up to the plate and actually increase their philanthropic donations."
And what actually inspired him to make this particular donation? Whilst studying at the London School of Economics, he struggled financially, and was having to work as a waiter at nights to make ends meet. When his tutor found out, concerned at the possible impact on his studies, she informed the local Quakers about his circumstances, and they sent him a cheque for £40 (not as small a sum as it sounds at that time) to enable him to continue. George Soros still remembers how touched he was by that, and that inspired his latest philanthropy.
It seems to me that there is a lesson in this for all of us. We are often discouraged from taking action to help others by the small resources we have, and the seemingly insurmountable problems that are faced. Yet a small action, such as helping a struggling student with a little money, can have a major impact on that person's life, and later affect the lives of so many others. This is a practical example of the so-called "butterfly effect", where the image is given of the beat of the butterfly's wings causing a turbulent flow that results in the start of a hurricane. Whatever we think of the analogy, it is true that seemingly small and insignificant acts can have unforeseen consequences, beyond our immediate comprehension or intention.
The cynical in this world will often tell us how misguided our good intentions are, how we are wasting our time, as the difference we as individuals can make are too insignificant. It is true that often our efforts will be doomed to fail, or will make too little difference to effect change. It is also true, however, that working together, our small efforts start to aggregate and have a better chance of success in effecting meaningful change. The one sure thing is that if we make no effort then there will certainly be very little chance of change.
5 days ago
My children keep a trick-or-treat for UNICEF box in the house all year long and whenever they find spare change, even if only a penny, they put it in the box. My husband and I also contribute in this manner. When we fill a box, we take it to the grocery store where there is a machine that counts the money, gives us a receipt, and sends our donation on to UNICEF. Our family and neighbors know about this practice and when Halloween comes around they give the children larger bills as well as coins and over the month of October, the kids collect even more. They have contributed hundreds of dollars by this point.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have much. The kids don't get an allowance and we all wear second hand clothes. My children don't have a firm grasp of how much money it takes to put gas in a car, to buy groceries for a week, or pay the health insurance bill but they can tell you how many cents it takes to bring clean water or nutritional biscuits to a child in danger of dying of thirst or malnutrition. They can tell you how much it costs for immunizations or a mosquito repellant net to protect a sleeping child from disease. I know that when they drop a nickel and a penny or two into the box, they are not thinking of changing the world; they are imagining just one child and they are imagining her smile.
I gave my nephew a UNICEF book some years ago, which showed how children in different parts of the world live. He had always been fascinated by maps and loved looking at atlases, of which he had several, but did not appreciate the differences in lifestyle between the countries on those maps.
ReplyDeleteHaving read the book, he realised just how lucky he was to live where he does, and how different other children's lives are, and so he persuaded my brother that they should do a sponsored walk to raise money for UNICEF. He was about six years old at the time.
Not only did he raise a good amount of money, but he appeared in his local paper and the article asked others to follow his example. Sometimes children see things so much clearer than we do!